MPAA strikes again - No more DVD Decryptor

Bakadeshi · Post by **Bakadeshi** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 6:43 pm

Maverick-Rubik wrote:It all comes down to the age-old philosophy of freedom versus security.

Eliminating the ability to make dvds for oneself also eliminates the ability for many to copy the material and use it for unwanted reasons (unauthorized selling). And quite frankly, it wouldn't hurt the companies for people to make copies for themself, so they'd rather get rid of the freedom altogether. But really, they entirely have the right to do it. It's their material, if they don't want it reproduced without their permission they can do it, it's their stuff.

See I don't completely agree with this reasoning. I could see if you were paying to rent or borrow the title or object, but you are esentially purchasing it from them. Once you purchase it, it now belongs to you. For you to do whatever you want with it in the confines of your own home. I beleive this was argued in the Betamax case back when the fair use act was put into place. Ofcourse, it is ther stuff to do whatever they want with it BEFORE they sell you it, so they can put whatever copy protection they want etc on it before sale, but once its in your hand, you are free to do whatever you want with it in your own home, so long as you don't break the copyright laws by distributing or selling outside your home. And it had better stay that way.

Kalium · Post by **Kalium** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:08 pm

Bakadeshi wrote:See I don't completely agree with this reasoning. I could see if you were paying to rent or borrow the title or object, but you are esentially purchasing it from them. Once you purchase it, it now belongs to you. For you to do whatever you want with it in the confines of your own home. I beleive this was argued in the Betamax case back when the fair use act was put into place. Ofcourse, it is ther stuff to do whatever they want with it BEFORE they sell you it, so they can put whatever copy protection they want etc on it before sale, but once its in your hand, you are free to do whatever you want with it in your own home, so long as you don't break the copyright laws by distributing or selling outside your home. And it had better stay that way.

The way things are headed, you will be buying a license soon, like you do for software. Then you won't even be able to sell it used, as the license will nullify the Doctrine of First Sale.

madbunny · Post by **madbunny** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:38 pm

Kalium wrote:
Bakadeshi wrote:See I don't completely agree with this reasoning. I could see if you were paying to rent or borrow the title or object, but you are esentially purchasing it from them. Once you purchase it, it now belongs to you. For you to do whatever you want with it in the confines of your own home. I beleive this was argued in the Betamax case back when the fair use act was put into place. Ofcourse, it is ther stuff to do whatever they want with it BEFORE they sell you it, so they can put whatever copy protection they want etc on it before sale, but once its in your hand, you are free to do whatever you want with it in your own home, so long as you don't break the copyright laws by distributing or selling outside your home. And it had better stay that way.
The way things are headed, you will be buying a license soon, like you do for software. Then you won't even be able to sell it used, as the license will nullify the Doctrine of First Sale.

I actually have an example of that. I purchased Half Life 2 when it first came out, wasn't impressed and gave the game away. Now, the game is useless unless the person that I gave it to has not only my own personal information, but pays a fee to the company for permission to use it. Bastards.

Anyway, yeah, hopefully we won't see something like that with regards to items like DVD's. DIVX tried, and dramatically. Proof, that even if something does cost 5.00, people want to own it, not just have 'permisssion' to use/watch it.

bum · Post by **bum** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 10:01 pm

madbunny wrote:I actually have an example of that. I purchased Half Life 2 when it first came out, wasn't impressed and gave the game away. Now, the game is useless unless the person that I gave it to has not only my own personal information, but pays a fee to the company for permission to use it. Bastards.

AH, Half Life 2 is such a great game. So great that if you bought the game and got a cd-key that some hacker cracked and is using you have to take a pic of the game disk, serial and reciept, and email it to sierra. Then you wait two weeks for them to reply and hopefully fix up your issue. So basicaly your guilty of stealing the cd key until you can prove that you got it legit. Now isnt that the opposite of how the law is supose to work?

JCD · Post by **JCD** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 1:25 pm

Back on the DVD side of things, this is sad to hear but ripping will always find it's way.
By the way, less than half of the (legit) Anime DVDs I own (mostly R1's btw) aren't actually encrypted. I even still have a legit right to copy them for myself

And I have yet to see an Anime dvd with a tricky encryption.

But seriously, this makes me want to wish things end here in Germany with this issue like it did in France recently:
A private man claimed to a company that he can't pull a copy of his DVD on VHS because of the encryption. Over a few months, this was pulled to the court and in the end it was decided that, due to the fact encryption basicly eliminates the owners right for a private copy, a law against encryption and copy protection was enforced. I don't know if this is eternerly true, but it is true that now all DVD manufacturers have to re-release all items which were copy protected or encrypted in any way. A big reason for this was also that many DVDs had no or too less warnings on them informing the buyer about the encryption before he needs to buy it.
Manufacturers of course feared that it would dramatically increase piracy, but I really doubt that. I hope that once it returns to a normal state, manufacturers will as well see that selling rates will stay the same, with or without encryption.

But I really doubt that will happen in other countries so soon. Mostly because courts and government don't want to hurt the economy by the manufacturers having to re-produce everything, not because of any piracy.
In Germany it's still like that once you break an encryption algorythm or copy protection, you broke the law. Even having links on your website to programs who can do that can get you arrested